Elona Shooter
Elona Shooter is a flash based browser game created by Noa. The game was officially released on October 27, 2009. Gameplay The objective of the game is to kill advancing enemies before your castle runs out of health. The player uses the mouse to aim their gun and clicks to shoot. Hitting an enemy in their respective weak point (usually the head) always results in a critical hit, however, any location has a chance of doing critical damage. For most guns, each shot uses ammunition, which must eventually be reloaded by pressing space or by attempting to fire while out of ammunition. Some weapons also feature different shooting techniques, such as the difference between guns (It hits the point you have clicked on) and bowguns (Everything in the path from the originating shot to where you clicked will be hit). A skill called Bow Mastery enables the player's arrows to travel through more enemies, becoming more and more effective against mobs. Weapons There are several weapons that you may use from Pistols to Gatling guns. Each of them requires a different skill. There are Small Guns, Rifles, Shotguns, and Big Guns. Each class has a select few and so far there is no way to gain new Weapon skills and only Noble has all four skills. Weapons looted after a round ends can be sold for 20% of their face value at the Smith in Town. Annotation: It is now possible, however unlikely, that new weapon skills will appear in the potential selection of level-up skills. You can increase the odds of this happening at some point in your career by choosing the "Capable" skill early. Classes You start out by choosing one of the four classes, Rogue, Hunter, Sheriff and Militia, Each with their own Class based skill and a set of weapon skills. There are four more classes: Noble, Ranger, Duelist, and Sniper that can be unlocked by getting each of the initial classes up to level 10. There is also an NPC class that can be added as party members: Guardian. Skills Each time you level up, your class skill increases in effectiveness. In addition, you are allowed to choose an extra skill from a list. You can increase the chance of a specific skill showing up in the list by focusing it - clicking on the skill in the Barracks will make it appear in the skill list more frequently. Hireling skills increase somewhat randomly, but you can significantly increase the chance that a specific skill will be increased for a given hireling by focusing it. Town After clearing each round, you can upgrade buildings, buy items, and hire allies. You can also spend Action Points on various events. Hirelings You start with a single character - yours. Some classes also start with a little girl to assist. Initially, you can have only one assistant, but you can acquire up to three by upgrading your house (2000 for first upgrade, 5000 for second). Hirelings cost 400 +50/level initially, and have a daily wage that also increases with level. They are critical to your success. Taking too long to get hirelings, choosing the wrong ones, and not developing them properly can all eventually get you to a point where you cannot effectively continue. Any good long-term strategy is going to have some pretty strong ideas about what classes of hireling you want, what weapons you want to give them, and so forth - selecting for things like teamwork/aiming, wage costs (and these two are in direct opposition to one another over the long run), usefulness in different roles in combat, and the possession of certain useful party skills (and/or not having duplicate party skills). If you're picky enough, and not fiendishly lucky, you WILL eventually need to hire interim hirelings so that you aren't crushed by waves of enemy in the mean time. When deciding on interim hirelings, it can be well worth it to consider starting gear. The noble, for example, starts with an excellent machine pistol-style firearm. If you intend to hire a heavy weapons militia, then hiring a ranger as an interim hireling will ensure that you have the heavy weapon to hand to them when they arrive. Sheriffs come with shotguns, snipers and militia come with rifles, and the hunter comes with the hunter's bowgun - which at that level is essentially a rifle but better for just about anyone. Ragnarok To get the Ragnarok Survivor medal you must do a two step process. First, you need to get the Ragnarok sword, which is a random loot drop in the game. After you have the sword, you need to equip it in one of the first 5 inventory slots, so that you can use it in the next round. To use it just press the slot number, like you would a grenade. However instead of the item helping you, it harms you. It summons a bunch of dragons that shoot lasers at your castle. This is where part 2 of getting the medal comes in, you need to kill the dragons before they kill you. Dragons do a lot of damage and have high health. Make sure you have a full squad of henchmen. Then get high damage weapons with a fast fire rate. Bowguns with bow mastery 5 or better, laser pistols, grenades, shotguns, and of course, gravity guns, all work well. The most important item is to have The Holy Grail of Jure. Once dragons come out, they will walk a little towards your castle, then start charging their lasers. Just before they fire, they will have big blue ball in their mouth (see pic), that's when you use The Grail of Jure. It will make you invincible for short time hopefully you kill the dragons before the invincibility wears off. The benefit of using Ragnarok is, if you kill all the dragons, you will get a large amount of XP. Another way to get the medal is to summon the dragons after the last wave, near end of the day. If timed right, the day will end before they can kill you. NOTE: It is no longer possible to use the End Timer to get the Ragnarok Survivor badge. (tested 12/12/2013) Medals Medals track various in-game accomplishments and most reward you with a small bonus. You may view your medals in the Museum. Tips General: *Your castle WILL get hit and the Leech weapon mod (if you can get it to drop) is the only sure way to keep its HP high. Repair kits can save you in a pinch but these have huge delays between uses, and high-level repair kits are somewhat rare. Repairman upgrades have some value, but it can't do the job alone. *Taunting multiple times will keep increasing your reward but the enemy HP gain does stack; great but risky way to rack up money fast. *As you progress further in the game new enemies appear. After day 10 armored enemies start to show up. That seems to be the do or die point for many players so get a weapon that does good armor damage for day 11. *To get the Elonian medal, you need to survive 40 days that counts as 1 round of play. On the 41st day enemies reset to day 1 but with more hp. This is the start of round 2. Round 3 will start on 81st day, Round 4 on the 121st day, and so on. *Boss days are every 10 days, and shift down three days every round. For example, in round 1 boss day starts on day 10. In round 2 boss day starts on day 47. Round 3 boss day starts on day 84. Round 4 boss day starts on day 121. Round 5 boss day starts on day 168. For boss days, make sure you have as many slots open as possible, since a lot of loot drops. *Mod days are every 10 days starting on day 4 and ignore round resets. Later in the game you should save some cash a few days in advance of a mod day since mods are the key to success once you have a 4+ mod slot weapon. *To effectively Recycle and get high level Mods, the value of the weapon must be at least double the value of the Mod. For example a Level 3 Leech Mod is nearly 3K, you will need a weapon to cost more than 6K, to have a chance to obtain it with Recycle. *If you have a manual reload weapon (shotgun, rifle, revolver), you can hold down the reload button and then shoot, the time it takes to replace the bullet is about the same amount of time the guns cooldown is. So effectively you are turning your gun into a bottomless supply of ammo. Weapons: *Bowgun bolts penetrate enemies, have decent armor penetration ability and hit larger foes several times, making them weapon of choice against ballistae, tanks, and dragons. Having a crossbowman in a party with "attack armored mobs" order will help a lot. Even better if the crossbow has an anti-armor mod. *Because of the limits of game physics, Bowgun bolts don't fly continuously; they appear at evenly spaced points along their flight path. For most enemies this means a bolt could hit more than once, or even several times, which is great. But for very small or very fast enemies it means that even a well-aimed bolt can fly through them without hitting, which can be a real problem against Suicide Bombers, Barbarians, and makes Bowguns almost useless against Dragonflies. *Putting Two Fire Rate Mods on a Bowgun will make it as good as an Assault Rifle but without the need for Reload. Fire Rate plus Auto Fire is even nicer, as you no longer need to click continuously. *Using the previously mentioned shotgun/bow strategies as your main character in hero mode means that they are also good at taking out flying dragons, pterodactyls, and massed troops. If you are using a shotgun with a sheriff, the knockback will also bunch them up further. *Impact mod is best used with automatic weapon (SMG, assault rifle, machine gun, HMG, Auto Shotgun), but makes it difficult to aim. Give it to your allies and they'll keep suicide bombers and fast moving enemies away from your castle walls. *If your weapon has a high enough fire rate, knockback skills and/or Impact Mods can push back dragons while they are in their attack animation and cancel the attack completely. *Upgrading a weapon doesn't change it's number of modding slots, and removes the last mod on a weapon. Using a level 1 mod on a weapon just before upgrading (if you have the space) can save you a lot of money in the long run by protecting the level 3 mod that you have on the gun. *The upgrade cost of a weapon depends on the price of the item. If you buy a highly leveled weapon from the store after using discounts to bring the price down, the next upgrade is cheaper as well. *The value of the upgraded weapon may have a higher or lower prices randomly, so try to Reforge several times before committing. Make sure the upgraded weapon is of a lower price so your next upgrade will be cheaper. *Gravity Guns and Bowguns (normal or rapid) do not work well with little sisters; when little sisters spawn, most of the time they will explode when somebody fires one of these weapons. Of course, they still work fine for love income. *Auto Shotguns with 2 or more ammo mods at a high level with a reloading mod or skill can keep most enemies from even entering the map when placed at the edge of the map and used by a sheriff. *When using a manual reload gun such as a rifle or shotgun, it is advised that you reload any time you're not clicking to fire. This way, you don't have to wait for ammo to drop to zero and spend more time reloading. Also, in the time it takes you to aim your next kill, you can easily reload one bullet. Use with discretion against fast enemies like suicide bombers, as you may need that extra time for repeated shots! Skills: *Bow Master can be left unmastered - you don't commonly hit more than 5 enemies in a row anyway. However, more Bow Mastery will allow you to shoot through bigger monsters such as ballistae and dragons for multiple hits, with piercing ability leftover for whatever is behind them. It certainly doesn't need to be mastered immediately, as it takes a while for the game to get to the point where there are significant numbers of larger targets and/or massed targets on the screen. *Have someone with the leadership skill in your squad, otherwise, all that firepower will go to waste! *Engineer skill is really quite potent, but it applies its bonus when the mod is added; it doesn't affect mods already in place. If you're crafting a weapon that you intend to use for the rest of the game, it can be worthwhile to wait for engineer 10 before starting to apply those mods (they are remodded every time the weapon is upgraded. No need to wait or seek only empty weapons with many slots). *Combining Active, Breeder, and Quick Eyed properly can give you a nice solid chicken income for late game. Buy up your initial stock of chickens with money and then start taking events once you get your Quick Eyed skill high enough. You'll regularly get additional chickens, you'll rarely lose chickens, and active will make sure you have plenty of AP to do it with. Note that this technique becomes more powerful as you gain the chicken and AP medals. As a side effect of event hunting, you'll also see your city walls grow slowly (it may be worth buying up a couple of levels of this up front as well) and you'll get occasional bonus skills on your main character. It's worth noting that your fame will also go up slowly. Fame may slightly increase the amount of visitors to your museum. *The "Reloading" skill is tagged "Faster Reloading is all you need!", which is not far from the truth at all. Unless you're using bows or bowguns, which do not reload, you will eventually want to put a lot of points into Reloading. Obviously, the weapons that you choose to focus on will have an influence on exactly how important it is compared to other skills, but almost everyone should invest in some early, and keep increasing throughout the game. *"Reloading", "Cooling", and "Accuracy" can go past 100% on their effects, this should just mean that at 100% extra accuracy/cool rate/reload rate, it'll happen twice as fast. Same applies to other things like Quick Eyed that goes up to 105%. Weapon / Skill combos: *Cripple Shot combined with a bowgun or shotgun will slow huge enemies almost to a stop. The skill also works well with automatic weapons, against all enemies. *A good shotgun or combat shotgun with maxed out Dr Holliday skill, decent accuracy skills, and a strong anti-armor mod is also good at taking out large enemies, and at slowing them fairly dramatically with cripple shot. *A Guardian with Shotgun, Dr Holliday and Disarm will render dragons, tanks, and other high-damage enemy harmless. When combined with Sheriff's Shotgun, Dr Holliday, and Cripple Shot, they make an ideal defensive pair. *Accuracy is not important for Bowgun, so don't waste an Accuracy Mod on it. *Normal (not Rapid) Bowguns allow use of Power Shot and have high base damage and decent armor penetration compared to the Rapid Bowgun. So stick as many Fire Rate Mods as you can muster and watch everything drop (Bow Mastery a plus, but not a required element). Autofire Mod still allows use of Power Shot on Normal Bowguns. (Tested with 50% chance and saw damage variation from Power Shot) *A Sniper with One Hit Kill and Leech-modified Sniper Rifle sometimes work miracles. *Because the Leech mod has a chance to gain wall HP with every kill, it can be very reliably effective on a character who kills lots of small enemies with a crowd-control weapon such as a Shotgun or Bowgun. Recruits: *Don't forget to uncheck "Boss" option for allies that you want to defend the castle from weaker enemies! Bosses usually take a while to kill, and the soldiers with "Boss" checked won't be firing at anything else for the duration. Likewise, uncheck "Defend" for any long-range fighters that you don't want to have rushing their targeting pointer back to the wall every time a rat gets through briefly. *By altering what your allies can shoot at, you can have somebody devoted to shooting air enemies or armored enemies with a weapon accuracy bonus. This is useful for defeating large swarms of dragonflies. *Rogues are the best money makers. In later games a high level Rogue (in Hero Mode) can make as high as 5-7K per day alone from killing the enemies. When combined with Chicken, Museum, and others, getting over 10K per day is very common. This will give you enough funding to keep upgrading your weapons to match up with the enemy strength. *"Cooling" Isn't used by recruits, neither is capable (Only obtainable on recruits via the trainer), so you'll normally want to avoid these two if possible. Earning Medals: *Once you have duelist unlocked, and possibly a fair number of the "starting days" medals for the starting cash, a duelist is an excellent choice for the crit medals. Start a game with the casual, better accuracy, more early enemies, and laptop difficulty settings (yes, yes, this *is* EZ-mode) and cycle hirelings until you find a noble. Any noble will do - you really just want him for his gun, and maybe a bit of help with the mosquitoes. Give the noble your starter pistol and take his SMG. Set the noble to attack air and bosses - that way he won't get in your way while you're killing the things that you want to target, and he'll still be of some use. Not having to worry about mosquitoes is nice. Now just focus on targeting crit zones, pushing the "sense" skill whenever it's available as an option. You should max out your crit-kill medals some time before day 10. *Build up a long-run game relatively early. Go with a character type you're comfortable with and relatively easy settings, and then just keep grinding out the days. Get the chicken medals before you get the sister medals, as the income from the one will help with the other. Make sure that you have someone on the team with the active skill and max it - that will help a lot with picking up the prayer, robbing, recycling, partying, and taunting medals. By the time you've ground through all of those, you'll probably be reasonably close to the 80 day mark - and once you've done all of those things, your starting characters will be in a significantly stronger position. *Note that earning medals that award skills (Ex: Sense +1) takes a skill slot in your new characters even if they cannot learn past rank 1. So plan your skills accordingly. Trivia * According to the Elonian badge and some news posted in the official Elona forums, the ability to transfer weapons, most notably the Gravity Gun, from Elona Shooter ''into the ''Elona ''main game was planned as a feature in future versions. However, development of ''Elona ceased before said feature was ever implemented or even developed. * The Gravity Axe from Elona+ might be a nod to the Gravity Gun. * The hanabi, also from Elona+, might be a nod to the Ha-na-bi archivement and the celebratory fireworks. * It's possible to shoot the younger sister in the castle at any time during rounds. All this does is silence the younger sister's comments for the remainder of the day, she will be back alive the next day. * As it was made to promote Elona overseas, this game is only available in English. External links *Elona Shooter at Kongregate (required to earn some achievements) *Elona Shooter at Armor Games *Review of Elona Shooter by Jay is Games *Guide and class skills list by Aerow *Hardcore Guide by Humenbean Category:Elona Shooter Category:Content Category:Discontinued content Category:Development